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What evidence does the archaeology reveal about the economy of Pompeii and Herculaneum?

The economy of Pompeii and Herculaneum, including trade, commerce, industries, occupations, and the archaeological and inscriptional evidence for them

A focused answer to the HSC Ancient History Core Study dot point on the economy of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Wine and garum production, the wool and baking industries, the rental economy of the Praedia of Julia Felix, and the port role linking both cities to Mediterranean trade.

Generated by Claude Opus 4.812 min answerUpdated 2026-07-01

Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed

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What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to describe the economic activities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and integrate specific archaeological, epigraphic, and literary evidence for them. The Cities of Vesuvius preserve more economic evidence than any other Roman urban site. Strong answers cite named workshops, named individuals, and engage with the Moeller vs Jongman debate about the scale of Pompeian industry. You also need the trade and property side of the picture: how goods moved in and out of the cities via the Sarno River and the Bay of Naples, and how wealthy Pompeians such as Julia Felix earned income from letting out commercial property, not only from producing goods.

In plain English

Picture a mid-sized beach town near a big harbour. Some locals run small businesses: a dry-cleaner-and-dyer who cleans and treats wool cloth (that is the fullery of Stephanus), a bakery that supplies bread to the whole street (the bakery of Modestus), and one famous local producer who bottles a sauce so good it gets shipped to shops all over the country and beyond, with the owner's name stamped proudly on every jar (that is Umbricius Scaurus and his fish sauce, garum). Other locals do not make anything at all; they just own buildings. Think of a landlord who has fitted out part of a big property as a rentable day spa plus a row of shops with flats above, and put up a "for lease" sign (that is Julia Felix and her estate). All of this, the workshops, the shops, and the landlords, feeds into the town's high street and its harbour, where goods arrive from other regions and get shipped out again. Archaeologists have not actually found the harbour itself, because two thousand years of river mud have buried and shifted the coastline, but the flood of stamped jars, shop signs, and rental notices proves the town was plugged into a much bigger trading network, not living off its own back garden.

The answer

Agriculture: wine, olive oil, fruit

The volcanic soils of Campania produced exceptional wine, olive oil, fruit, and grain. Around 30 villas rusticae (working farms) have been excavated in the Pompeian hinterland, including the Villa Regina at Boscoreale, the Villa of the Mosaic Columns, and the Villa of the Mysteries (which combined agricultural production with elite residence).

Wine production used dolia (large fermentation jars), torcularia (presses), and amphorae for export. Vesuvinum (Vesuvian wine) was a recognised brand. Amphorae from Pompeii have been found across the western Mediterranean, including Gaul, Spain, and North Africa.

Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia 14.34) lists Pompeian wines among the regional vintages worth naming, though he is critical of their quality compared with the Falernian.

Manufacturing: garum, textiles, bread, pottery

Garum production. Pompeii was a major Mediterranean centre for garum, the fermented fish sauce used in nearly every Roman dish. The workshop of Aulus Umbricius Scaurus produced four named grades (highest "flos floris," second, third, fourth). Urceus jars labelled "G(ari) F(los) Scauri" have been found across the empire. Robert Curtis (Garum and Salsamenta, 1991) catalogued 30 garum producers in Pompeii. The House of Umbricius Scaurus, near the Porta Marina, advertises the family business in its atrium: a floor mosaic depicts four labelled urceus jars carrying the firm's product lines.

Textile industry. The fullonicae cleaned and treated wool. The Fullery of Stephanus on the Via dell'Abbondanza preserves the basins where wool was trampled with urine (collected in amphorae outside the shop), the press, and dyeing facilities. The "Procession of the Fullers" fresco from the Fullery of Veranius Hypsaeus shows fullers worshipping Venus, who was both Pompeii's patron deity and patron of the trade.

Walter Moeller (The Wool Trade of Ancient Pompeii, 1976) argued Pompeii was a major regional textile centre with hundreds of workers. Willem Jongman (The Economy and Society of Pompeii, 1988) disputed this, arguing the scale was modest and agriculture, not industry, dominated the economy. Most current scholarship sits between the two positions.

Bakeries. Over 30 bakeries (pistrina) have been identified. The Bakery of Modestus produced 81 loaves carbonised in the oven on the day of the eruption. Lava-stone millstones turned by donkeys ground the grain; the loaves were marked with a cross to break into eight portions.

Pottery and brickmaking. The kilns of the Eumachia family produced amphorae and tiles. Bronze and metal workshops along the Via dell'Abbondanza produced cookware, tools, and votive items.

Commercial property: the rental economy

Not every wealthy Pompeian was a producer. The Praedia of Julia Felix (Regio II.4), a large estate on the south-eastern edge of Pompeii, shows the property and rental side of the economy. Julia Felix subdivided part of her property into an elegant bath suite and a row of shops with upper-storey living quarters (cenacula), and advertised them for lease on a painted rental notice (a dipinto) on the street wall, offering the whole package on a five-year term. The notice is direct evidence that wealthy Pompeians could earn income as landlords, from rent, as well as (or instead of) from production or agriculture.

Retail trade and shops

Over 600 shops have been identified at Pompeii. The Via dell'Abbondanza and Via di Mercurio were the main commercial streets. Thermopolia (fast-food bars with sunken counter-jars) were ubiquitous; over 150 have been identified. The thermopolium of Vetutius Placidus preserves the counter, the lararium, and a deposit of around 1,300 sestertii.

Shop signs were painted onto exterior walls. The "Procession of the Carpenters" relief on the workshop of Verecundus shows the trade. Electoral graffiti from the AD 79 elections (recommending candidates "the bakers ask," "the muleteers ask," "the goldsmiths ask") provide a directory of occupational groups in Pompeii. Some of the roughly 600 shops, including those on the Praedia of Julia Felix, were rented rather than owner-operated.

The Forum, the port, and trade networks

The Forum at Pompeii was the commercial and civic centre. The macellum (food market) on the Forum's east side preserves the market stalls, the tholos (central feature), and the painted decoration of food being sold. On the west side of the Forum, beside the Sanctuary of Apollo, the mensa ponderaria, a stone counter with standardised recesses for gauging dry goods, preserves an inscription recording that local magistrates aligned Pompeii's weights and measures with the official Roman standard, evidence of formal market regulation rather than informal trade alone.

Pompeii sat at the mouth of the Sarno River, navigable to small and medium craft in antiquity, giving the city river-port access to the Bay of Naples shipping network centred on Puteoli, the main deep-water harbour serving Rome before the development of Ostia. No harbour installation at Pompeii has been conclusively excavated: the ancient coastline sat closer to the city than the modern coast, and centuries of Sarno alluviation have buried and shifted the shoreline. The city's port function is therefore inferred from the goods and the geography rather than confirmed by a surviving quay.

Amphora typology (the distinct shape and stamped handle of a container) lets archaeologists trace specific trade routes. Amphorae recovered at Pompeii carried olive oil from Baetica (southern Spain) and Africa, wine from Gaul and the eastern Mediterranean, and garum-style fish products from Spain, alongside the cities' own exports: Vesuvinum wine and, above all, Umbricius Scaurus's garum, distributed in stamped urceus jars found from Gaul to the eastern Mediterranean.

Herculaneum's relationship to the sea is more direct: the ancient shoreline ran close to the town's southern edge, evidenced by the boat sheds where around 340 skeletons were recovered in 1980 to 1982. Even so, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill argues Herculaneum was effectively a high-status suburb of Naples (Neapolis), more residential than commercial, rather than a working cargo port on Pompeii's scale.

Slaves and labour

Slave labour underpinned the economy. The walls of bakeries, fulleries, and brothels (the Lupanare) show graffiti naming individual slaves. The skeleton remains of slaves identified at the Boscoreale and Boscotrecase villas show the rural labour force. Roman law (the Lex Aquilia, 286 BC) treated slaves as property; the AD 79 evidence preserves both the legal abstraction and the lived reality.

Historians' verdicts

Walter Moeller (1976) treats Pompeii as a major textile centre with hundreds of fulleries.

Willem Jongman (1988) argues Moeller overstates industrial scale and that Pompeii was primarily an agricultural town with services and crafts attached.

Miko Flohr (The World of the Fullo, 2013) re-examined the fulleries themselves and found most fulling was small-scale and embedded in houses and shops, refining Moeller's "major industry" picture downward without reducing Pompeii to a purely agrarian town.

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum, 1994) reads the houses themselves as evidence: elite residences combined production (workshops, storage) with display, blurring the modern distinction between home and workplace.

Mary Beard (Pompeii, 2008) integrates the debates: the cities preserved a small-to-medium-sized regional economy, neither a global hub nor a purely agricultural backwater.

Economic evidence at a glance

Activity	Site	Key evidence
Wine	Villa Regina, Boscoreale	Dolia, presses, amphorae
Garum	Umbricius Scaurus workshop	Urceus jars, four grades
Textiles	Fullery of Stephanus	Basins, press, dyeing
Bread	Bakery of Modestus	81 carbonised loaves
Surgery	House of the Surgeon	Bronze surgical instruments
Retail food	Thermopolium of Vetutius Placidus	Counter, cash deposit
Market	Macellum (Forum)	Stalls, frescoes of produce
Civic-economic	Eumachia building (Forum)	Wool guild headquarters

How to read a source on this topic

Section I source questions on the economy commonly use shop signs, amphora inscriptions, electoral graffiti, the "Procession of the Fullers" fresco, photographs of workshops, or extracts from Pliny the Elder. Three reading habits.

First, separate the named from the generic. An urceus jar labelled "Gari Flos Scauri" identifies a specific producer; a generic amphora identifies a region (e.g. Hispanian oil). Always note which level of evidence the source gives.

Second, integrate epigraphy with archaeology. Electoral graffiti name occupational groups ("the muleteers ask"); the workshops themselves show what those groups did. Use both together for a high-band answer.

Third, watch for the Moeller vs Jongman debate. Any source on textile production should prompt the question: is this evidence of a major industry (Moeller) or a modest local trade (Jongman)?

Model exam responses

1. Source-analysis response (usefulness/reliability of a stamped container). "Source A, an urceus jar of the type stamped with the name of Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, is highly useful for a historian reconstructing Pompeii's trade networks. As a contemporary, physical object it is free of the retrospective bias of literary evidence: the stamp names a specific Pompeian producer, and the distribution of such jars across the western Mediterranean maps the reach of the city's garum exports via the Sarno River and the Bay of Naples. Its reliability as evidence of scale is more limited: a jar proves only that a container reached a find-spot, not the volume of trade or the route it travelled, and containers were reused. Corroborated against Curtis's catalogue of around 30 Pompeian garum producers, however, it supports a picture of specialised, export-oriented manufacture within a modest regional economy."

Marker's note: markers reward the explicit usefulness/reliability structure, a named producer and named modern scholar, and a corroboration step, rather than a description of what the jar looks like.

2. Essay paragraph (the scale of Pompeian industry). "The archaeological evidence proves diversity of production, but its scale is easily overstated. The Fullery of Stephanus preserves washing basins, a press, and dyeing facilities, and Moeller (1976) read such workshops as proof of a major regional textile centre; yet Jongman (1988) showed the same evidence is consistent with a modest craft sector serving local demand within an economy dominated by agriculture, and Flohr's re-examination of the fulleries (2013) found most fulling embedded in houses and shops rather than organised for export. The one demonstrably export-scale industry is garum: Umbricius Scaurus's four graded products, shipped in stamped urceus jars found across the western Mediterranean, mark the point where Pompeian manufacture genuinely crossed from local trade into Mediterranean commerce. The evidence therefore supports a diversified regional economy with one standout exporter, not an industrial city."

Marker's note: this paragraph scores because it sustains a judgement about scale, uses named archaeological evidence precisely, and deploys three historians as steps in the argument rather than as a list.

3. Short-answer response (occupations). "The occupations of Pompeii are documented by an unusually direct combination of archaeology and epigraphy. Workshops preserve the trades themselves: the Bakery of Modestus (81 carbonised loaves), the Fullery of Stephanus (wool processing), and the House of the Surgeon (a complete set of bronze surgical instruments). The electoral programmata of the AD 79 campaign then supply a written directory of the same occupational world, with the bakers, muleteers, goldsmiths, and dyers publicly endorsing candidates. Read together, the two evidence types show both what Pompeians did and how their trades acted as visible groups in civic life."

Marker's note: markers reward pairing the physical workshop evidence with the inscriptional evidence, with at least one named site per occupation.

Command words and using economy sources

Match the command word: "outline"/"identify" wants named evidence, fast (site, person, object); "explain" wants a mechanism (how a stamped jar maps a trade route); "assess"/"evaluate"/"to what extent" wants a judgement on SCALE, which on this dot point almost always means the Moeller-Jongman-Flohr debate. For any source: state its content, then its reliability (contemporary physical evidence, but what exactly does it prove?), then its usefulness for the specific question, then its perspective or limitation (a rental notice advertises; a shop sign self-promotes; Pliny sneers at provincial wine). Weave historiography as argument: "Moeller read this as major industry, but Jongman showed ..." earns marks; a name dropped at the end of a paragraph does not.

Common exam traps

Treating Pompeii and Herculaneum as economically identical: Herculaneum was smaller, more residential, and less industrial. Wallace-Hadrill stresses the difference.
Overstating industrial scale: Cite Jongman's critique of Moeller. A 7-mark answer that ignores the debate loses marks.
Forgetting electoral graffiti: The AD 79 electoral campaign provides a directory of occupational groups. The bakers, muleteers, goldsmiths, and dyers all endorsed candidates.
Confusing dolia, amphorae, and urceus: Dolia: large fermentation jars. Amphorae: shipping containers (wine, oil). Urceus: small jars for garum.
Claiming Pompeii's harbour has been excavated: It has not. The port function is inferred from the Sarno River geography and the imported/exported goods; the ancient shoreline is buried under centuries of alluviation.

Exam-style practice questions

Practice questions written in the style of NESA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.

Practice (NESA)6 marksWhat does archaeological evidence reveal about the economy of Pompeii? Support your response using one source.

Show worked answer →

A 6-mark response needs three to four economic activities with named archaeological evidence.

Wine and olive oil production: Around 30 villas rusticae have been excavated in the territory of Pompeii, including the Villa Regina at Boscoreale (a wine-producing villa with dolia for fermentation). Wine was exported in amphorae stamped with maker names; Vesuvinum was a recognised regional brand. The Forum Wine Market and shop signs (the painted thermopolium of Vetutius Placidus on the Via dell'Abbondanza) attest to retail trade.
Garum (fish sauce) production: Pompeii was a major centre for garum, the fermented fish sauce ubiquitous in Roman cooking. The workshop of Aulus Umbricius Scaurus produced four labelled qualities (best, second, etc.), exported in distinctive urceus pottery jars found across the western Mediterranean. Robert Curtis (1991) catalogued over 30 garum producers in Pompeii.
Wool and textile industry: The fullonica (fullery) workshops processed and dyed wool. The Fullery of Stephanus on the Via dell'Abbondanza had basins for washing and a press. Walter Moeller (1976) identified Pompeii as a major regional textile centre, though this has been challenged by Willem Jongman (1988), who argues the scale was modest and agriculture was the dominant economic activity.
Retail trade and shops: Over 600 shops have been identified at Pompeii. The Via dell'Abbondanza and the Via di Mercurio were the main commercial streets, with bakeries (the Bakery of Modestus had 81 loaves carbonised in its oven), thermopolia (fast-food bars), bronze workshops, and pottery kilns.

Markers reward named evidence (Umbricius Scaurus, Stephanus, Modestus), Latin terminology, and at least one historian (Curtis, Moeller, Jongman). The Jongman vs Moeller debate is the standard historiographical reference.

Practice (NESA)4 marksIdentify FOUR occupations evidenced at Pompeii and Herculaneum and the source for each.

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A 4-mark "identify" requires four distinct occupations with named evidence per occupation.

Baker (pistor): The Bakery of Modestus contained 81 carbonised loaves and bread-making equipment. The shop sign of Verecundus on the Via dell'Abbondanza shows a felt-maker advertising his craft.
Wine merchant: Electoral graffiti and amphorae inscriptions identify named wine sellers. The thermopolium of Vetutius Placidus shows the retail end of the wine trade.
Fuller (fullo): The Fullery of Stephanus shows the cleaning, dyeing, and pressing of wool. The "Procession of the Fullers" fresco shows fullers worshipping Venus.
Doctor (medicus): The House of the Surgeon at Pompeii produced a complete set of surgical instruments (probes, forceps, scalpels, cupping vessels). Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum, 1994) uses such finds to discuss the social status of trades.
Garum producer: Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, named on urceus jars across the western Mediterranean.
Goldsmith: The House of Pinarius Cerialis preserved tools and unworked gems.

Markers reward four distinct occupations, with at least one named individual and one Latin term per occupation.

Practice questions

Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.

foundation4 marksOutline THREE pieces of archaeological evidence for well-developed manufacturing industries at Pompeii.

Show worked solution →

A 4-mark "outline" wants three correct, named, briefly developed points, roughly one mark per developed point plus a mark for range.

Point 1: Textiles: The Fullery of Stephanus on the Via dell'Abbondanza preserves washing basins, urine-collection jars (used as a cleaning agent), and a press, showing wool cleaning, dyeing, and finishing on site.
Point 2: Bread: The Bakery of Modestus preserved 81 loaves carbonised whole in its oven, plus lava-stone mills turned by donkeys, showing large-scale, mechanised bread production.
Point 3: Garum: The workshop of Aulus Umbricius Scaurus produced fish sauce in four graded qualities, exported in urceus jars stamped with his name and found across the western Mediterranean.

Markers reward three distinct, correctly named pieces of evidence rather than generic description ("there were workshops").

foundation4 marksIdentify THREE named individuals whose property provides archaeological evidence for the economy of Pompeii, and state what each shows.

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A 4-mark "identify" needs three individuals, each correctly named and tied to a specific piece of evidence.

Aulus Umbricius Scaurus: His garum workshop and stamped urceus jars show specialised, export-oriented fish-sauce manufacture reaching the wider Mediterranean.
Julia Felix: Her estate (the Praedia of Julia Felix) combined a private bath suite and a row of shops with upper-storey apartments, let out for rent, showing that wealthy Pompeians invested in commercial property as well as production.
Eumachia: A wealthy public priestess who funded the large building on the Forum associated by inscription with the fullones (the fullers' guild), showing elite patronage of a trade.

Markers reward three correctly named individuals, each linked to accurate, specific evidence.

core5 marksSOURCE A (an owned ExamExplained reconstruction): a painted rental notice of the type recorded on the estate of Julia Felix, advertising an elegant bath suite and a row of shops with upper-storey living quarters (cenacula) to let on a five-year term. Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain what this evidence reveals about the property and rental economy of Pompeii.

Show worked solution →

A 5-mark "explain" with a source needs the source USED plus own knowledge that goes beyond it.

Use the source: Source A shows bath and shop rental being advertised as an organised commercial activity, tied to one large, named estate rather than a household producing its own goods.
Own knowledge: The Praedia of Julia Felix (Regio II.4) was excavated with a private bath complex, a row of shop fronts, and residential apartments within a single subdivided property, matching the kind of notice described in Source A. Over 600 shops have been identified across Pompeii as a whole, and many were plausibly tenanted rather than owner-operated.
Significance: This shows a Pompeian elite that earned income as landlords, not only as producers or farmers, supplementing agricultural and manufacturing wealth with rent.
Limitation: Source A (like the genuine notice it is modelled on) advertises one unusually large, subdivided estate and should not be assumed typical of every shop or apartment at Pompeii.

Markers reward explicit use of Source A, accurate own-knowledge detail, and a stated limitation.

core6 marksSOURCE B (an owned ExamExplained reconstruction): an illustrative stamped amphora handle of the type used at Pompeii, marked with a workshop name and a place of origin, of the kind archaeologists use to trace the movement of wine, oil, and garum around the Mediterranean. Assess the usefulness and reliability of stamped-container evidence, such as Source B, for reconstructing Pompeii's trade networks.

Show worked solution →

A 6-mark source-analysis task needs balanced usefulness AND reliability, plus own knowledge and ideally a historian.

Nature of the evidence: Stamped amphora handles and urceus jars (such as those reading 'G(ari) F(los) Scauri' from the workshop of Umbricius Scaurus) are direct, contemporary, physical evidence, not a later literary reconstruction.
Usefulness: The stamp names the producer and often the region, letting archaeologists map find-spots against known production centres. Umbricius Scaurus's garum jars have been recovered across the western Mediterranean, demonstrating Pompeii's connection to a wide export network via the Sarno River and the Bay of Naples.
Reliability and limitations: A stamp proves only that a container reached a find-spot, not the full shipping route, the quantity traded, or whether contents matched the label; jars were also reused, which can mislead a distribution map.
Corroboration: Cross-reference the distribution evidence with written sources (Pliny the Elder lists Pompeian wine among the regional vintages, Naturalis Historia 14.34, though he rates it below Falernian) and with the historiographical debate on the scale of Pompeii's industry (Moeller versus Jongman).

Markers reward balanced usefulness and limitations, a named example, and corroboration with own knowledge.

core5 marksExplain how the archaeological evidence for Pompeii's river and coastal access supports the view that the city was integrated into wider Mediterranean trade networks.

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A 5-mark "explain" needs a mechanism, not just a list of facts.

Geography: Pompeii sat at the mouth of the Sarno River, navigable to small and medium craft in antiquity, linking the town to the Bay of Naples shipping network centred on Puteoli.
Evidence of imports: Amphorae recovered at Pompeii carried olive oil from Baetica (southern Spain) and Africa and wine from Gaul and the Aegean, showing goods arriving by sea and river.
Evidence of exports: Pompeii's own products, Vesuvinum wine and, above all, Umbricius Scaurus's garum in stamped urceus jars, have been recovered at find-spots across the western Mediterranean, showing goods leaving by the same route.
Qualification: No harbour installation has been conclusively excavated at Pompeii; the ancient coastline has shifted with centuries of Sarno alluviation, so the port function is inferred from the goods and the geography rather than from a surviving harbour structure.

Markers reward the geographical mechanism, named categories of import/export evidence, and the qualification about incomplete harbour evidence.

exam25 marksESSAY. To what extent does the archaeological evidence show that Pompeii and Herculaneum were significant centres of industry and trade, rather than primarily agricultural towns?

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A band-6 essay sustains a judgement on "to what extent," marshals specific dated and named evidence, and weaves historiography. This is a PLAN plus a model paragraph.

Thesis: The archaeological record shows a genuinely diversified economy in which specialised, sometimes export-oriented manufacturing coexisted with a substantial agricultural base and a real, if modestly scaled, Mediterranean trade network; Pompeii was neither a purely agrarian backwater nor a major industrial exporter on the scale of a city such as Ostia, and Herculaneum's economy was smaller and more residential than Pompeii's.
Argument line 1: specialised, exportable manufacturing: Umbricius Scaurus's garum workshop produced four graded qualities, distributed in stamped urceus jars found across the western Mediterranean; over 30 pistrina (bakeries) including the Bakery of Modestus (81 carbonised loaves); the Fullery of Stephanus and other fulleries processed and dyed wool.
Argument line 2: a substantial agricultural base: Around 30 excavated villae rusticae (the Villa Regina at Boscoreale), volcanic soils producing the recognised Vesuvinum brand, noted (if not rated highly) by Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia 14.34); Jongman's (1988) case that agriculture, not industry, dominated Pompeii's economy.
Argument line 3: a real but modestly scaled trade network: The Sarno River and the Bay of Naples gave both cities sea access; imported amphorae (Baetican oil, Gallic wine) alongside exported garum and wine show genuine Mediterranean connectivity; but no harbour structure has been conclusively excavated, and Herculaneum, on Wallace-Hadrill's reading, looks more like a high-status residential satellite of Neapolis than a working cargo port.
Historiography: Walter Moeller (1976): a major regional textile centre. Willem Jongman (1988): a modest industrial scale within an agriculture-dominated economy. Miko Flohr (The World of the Fullo, 2013): most fulling was small-scale and house-based rather than large export industry, refining Moeller downward. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (1994): Pompeian houses combined production and display, blurring home and workplace. Mary Beard (2008): integrates the evidence as a moderately prosperous, not exceptional, regional economy.
Model paragraph (argument line 3): Yet trade, not just production, is where the two cities are most easily overstated. The Sarno River gave Pompeii access to the Bay of Naples and, through it, to Puteoli's wider shipping lanes, and the amphorae recovered at the site, Baetican oil, Gallic wine, alongside Pompeii's own garum leaving in urceus jars stamped with Umbricius Scaurus's name, prove real Mediterranean-wide connections. Yet no excavation has conclusively located Pompeii's harbour installations, buried and displaced as the coastline has been by centuries of Sarno alluviation, so the port function must be inferred from goods rather than confirmed by a surviving quay. Herculaneum makes the point sharper still: Wallace-Hadrill reads its smaller scale and more residential character as evidence of a high-status Bay of Naples suburb rather than a working port town, a caution against treating "Cities of Vesuvius" as a single, uniformly commercial economic unit.
Conclusion: Significant but not exceptional: the evidence supports real industry and real trade, integrated into a wider Mediterranean network, but operating at a modest regional scale alongside, not instead of, agriculture. Judgement sustained.

Marker's note: band 6 answers answer the "to what extent" with a clear verdict, deploy precise named archaeological evidence (workshops, individuals, container types), and integrate at least two named historians as argument, not decoration. A chronological description of workshops with no sustained judgement caps the response at mid-band.

exam20 marksESSAY. Evaluate the extent to which archaeological evidence, as distinct from ancient written sources, is essential for understanding the economy of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Show worked solution →

A band-6 essay evaluates the RELATIVE contribution of evidence types, not just what each shows. This is a plan plus a model paragraph.

Thesis: Archaeological evidence is essential because it supplies the specific, quantifiable detail (named workshops, stamped containers, carbonised produce) that the surviving ancient written sources on Pompeii's economy do not provide; written sources remain useful for context, price, and attitude, but the economic picture as a whole is overwhelmingly reconstructed from material remains.
Argument line 1: written evidence is thin and incidental: Pliny the Elder mentions Pompeian wine only in passing, and unfavourably, ranking it below Falernian (Naturalis Historia 14.34); no ancient author set out to describe Pompeii's economy systematically.
Argument line 2: archaeology supplies the specifics: The Fullery of Stephanus, the Bakery of Modestus, and Umbricius Scaurus's garum workshop, together with electoral graffiti naming occupational groups and the Praedia of Julia Felix's rental notice, give named, dateable, physical evidence no surviving text records.
Argument line 3: the two evidence types still need each other: Amphora distribution shows WHERE goods travelled but not always WHY or under what price and trade conditions; a brief literary reference like Pliny's can supply attitude and context (for example, Roman elite disdain for Campanian wine) that the physical evidence alone cannot.
Historiography: Mary Beard (2008) treats the archaeological record as the primary evidence base for Pompeii's economy, using literary sources sparingly and critically. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (1994) reads the houses themselves as a form of evidence, output that written sources never generated. Willem Jongman (1988) builds his revisionist case for a modest, agriculture-led economy almost entirely from excavated data (shop counts, villa surveys) rather than texts.
Model paragraph: The imbalance is stark: a single dismissive line from Pliny the Elder is the closest any surviving ancient author comes to discussing Pompeii's economy directly, whereas the excavated city supplies named workshops, stamped export containers, and a rental notice for an entire commercial estate. Mary Beard's synthesis is built almost entirely from this material record, using literary references only to supply context, such as elite Roman attitudes to Campanian wine, that the physical remains cannot voice. Archaeology is therefore not merely a supplement to the written evidence for Pompeii's economy; for most of what is known, it is the evidence.
Conclusion: Essential, not merely useful: archaeological evidence carries the overwhelming weight of what is known about the Pompeian economy, with written sources contributing occasional but genuine context.

Marker's note: band 6 answers make an explicit comparative judgement between evidence types, cite specific archaeological AND literary examples, and integrate named historians as part of the argument.